An Inside Look At The Growing Applications Of Intent Data

Those who started using intent data early on have seen the great benefits of leveraging the insights gained through the use of the intent data. With intent data, the marketers have been able to –

Identify the key decision makers

Prioritize the high-value key accounts

Create relevant messages and deliver them at the right time which has increased the likelihood of closing the deals.

There are so many benefits of using intent data in addition to what is mentioned above. Intent data-driven marketing accelerates the sales process i.e., leads can now be moved down the funnel more quickly than you could before. You can use intent data to gain the maximum results once you understand the applications of intent data.

Let’s first have a look at the latest Demand Unit Waterfall which now includes two additional stages as shown in below image. There are two terms mentioned there – Target Demand and Active Demand. Marketers usually focus their attention on target demand as they know who their ideal buyers are. However, only at the later stage, they come to know who among them are actively searching for the solutions. That is, they don’t know who have active demand until later. The intent data solves this problem by giving you these details early on and hence you can know who your qualified leads are even before they enter your sales funnel.

Using intent data, you can acknowledge not only the ones who could be interested in your products but also the ones who are in-market. So, you can target these people, rather than targeting only those who are merely in the shopping mood.

Let’s understand who can be called ‘in-market audiences’? In-market audiences are the people who are actively looking for your solutions. Let’s say you have set up an ad campaign to sell your travel equipment. In-market audiences are the users who –

Clicked recently on similar ads

Are searching on Google

Browsing travel or travel equipment websites

As defined by Marketo, intent data is a combination of both the topic data and context data which helps us understand in-market audiences.

What is the topic data?

It is the data collected through search queries on the internet. For Example, the ones who want to know what is about intent data would type the related keywords. Topic data helps us to understand what topics your prospecting audiences are interested in. You can gather topic data from different sources as below –

Information about people who visit your website can be tracked through their IP addresses.

Once your website visitors fill the online form and give you their contact information, you track their behavior on your website using marketing automation.

Some third-party vendors provide details about the people visiting other websites which are owned by your competitors.

Just as you can track page view records of your website visitors after they fill out the online form, a few vendors like TechTarget who can give you page view records of those who visit other websites. Having insights about what your competitor’s prospects are doing can help you form a better approach.

Now let’s see why we need context data?

If a person is searching online for ‘intent data’, it isn’t necessary that they want to buy the products. It could be that they are writing a report on intent data and only need extra information on the topic. To know how much a person is interested in buying, you also need to know context data.

In intent data, you will get both the topic data and context data. Please read below-mentioned applications of the intent data –

1. Design your landing pages according to the need of your visitors

Until your website visitors sign up, they remain anonymous. Although you can make out their company or industry through their IP address, you still need to know a few more details about them. To make your messages more targeted, you need to know whether they are the key decision makers or more precisely, a CEO or CMO. To know these details you have to prompt your visitors to sign up. You can use behavioral intent data to design landing pages with the appropriate CTAs and they will be prompted to fill out the form.

You already have behavioral intent data of your website visitors through the use of marketing automation. Using this data in your lead scoring model can help you identify the high-qualified leads. In addition to that, if you use third-party intent data, you will acknowledge in-market audiences early on. Rather than waiting for in-market audiences to visit your website first and then qualify them, you will have enough insights to qualify them even before they approach you. This way, you can hit the iron while it is hot.

3. Use personalized email to nurture leads

Even if you know the job titles you cannot understand the exact role and responsibility of the person and hence it becomes difficult to segment the email lists on that basis. As the job titles change frequently and are not standardized, it becomes difficult to address messages considering the job titles only. Though personalized campaigns can be delivered, they won’t necessarily be relevant as they lack the topic data. The intent data gives both their titles and the topics they are interested in. This makes segmentation most accurate and you can also initiate right campaigns for them.

In today’s world, prospects do all the research well before they contact the brands. The information they read on social media or the internet shapes their decisions. Hence, if you use intent data that is recent and informative, the predictions will be more accurate. It is far better than integrating marketing automation data with CRM in predictive analytics. Stay far away from complex algorithms and time-consuming data integrations and start using the intent data today. Many companies have recognized the need to use intent data. What have you been waiting for? Contact us for more information.

Contact Us

Author Vikas Bhatt

Vikas is the co-founder of OnlyB2B ITES Pvt Ltd and a Demand Generation cum Data Cleansing Expert. He has 10+ years of experience in B2B Lead Generation, Data Mining, and Content Syndication.
Say hi on vikas.bhatt@only-b2b.com

ABOUT US

Only-B2B.com is a B2B demand generation powerhouse headquartered in San Francisco with operating centers in India. We help companies who are in constant search for business leads to make their marketing campaign a success. With us, you will experience a great blend of creativity and professionalism along with passion for what we do.

Resources

How to Get Better at B2B Lead Generation
B2B Lead Generation is one of the most challenging part is what all the marketers agree upon. Strategies used in B2B lead generation evolve as companies gain new insights into what does and doesn’t work.